"Summoned back from summer break, the House on Tuesday pushed through an emergency $26 billion jobs bill that Democrats said would save 300,000 teachers, police and others from election-year layoffs. President Barack Obama immediately signed it into law."

Thing is, money doesn't grow on trees, and what with all the other failures being propped up by the Federal government, the money has to come from somewhere. In this case, it is the Food Stamp program that will take a hit.

Nationally, 20% of Americans use food stamps. In Florida, the amount allotted for a single individual is $111. That amount won't take you very far into the month, even in today's supposedly non-inflated economy.

But the problem with taking funds from food stamps to pay for teachers is that their charges will be affected. See, one in four kids suffers from "food insufficiency", which means they're hungry. One in four kids rely on food stamps. More than half of all children between 1 and 20 will rely on food stamps at some point in their lives.

Teaching hungry kids doesn't work so well. This is robbing Peter to Pay Paul.

Let's do some simple math. If that 26 billion is divided equally among the states, each gets 500 million, plus change. Then, if that sum is adjusted according to population and need, my state Kansas ( 3 mil vs. California's 37 mil ) doesn't get anything near half a billion. And Ca's been shedding teachers like a soggy dog shakes water.

Our state requires its school districts to have their budget set before the end of school in spring. Which means their staffing is set and will not change just because the state got some new federal money. I assume most states function in this way. Plus, all this upset will make many school districts wary of hiring new staff in the future.

Not until the economy picks up again.

My guess is that not many teaching jobs will be saved, as opposed to those police and firefighters and other emergency personnel people brought back, mainly because, HEY KIDS, the new school year has started or will in just a couple of weeks. I do not begrudge their good fortune.

What I do gripe about, however, is Obama's decided emphasis on making Republicans happy. Or as his PS Gibbs put it, "Professional Leftists" will never be satisfied until we have Canadian single-payer health and no Pentagon.

Ahhhh but you miss the point Ranger! Cutting food stamp funding will mean they will have to lower the number of individuals eligible. Then they can say "See it's now only 1 in 8 children that rely on food stamps. What a good job we are doing".